Lying Together by Gaynor Arnold Page B

finger, he finally came to it: ‘Wednesday 19th – Photography Club in the Charles Ramsden Room, Peace Pledge Union in the Main Hall, and Philosophy Society in the library.’ I was delighted with myself. Jack was a philosopher just like I’d imagined. I thought that if I waited outside the hall when the Philosophy Club ended the next Wednesday I was sure to see Jack coming out. I worked out a number of excuses as to why I should be there at that particular time, and what I would say to Jack when he saw me; and I imagined how he would offer me his arm and take me back to the hotel and raise his hat and ask when he might see me again. But even though I waited for several Wednesdays, watching all the different people coming out and drifting down the street in twos and threes, Jack never appeared.
    I realized that I’d been kidding myself, anyway. No real gentleman who came and ate in the hotel was going to fall in love with a mere waitress. I told myself that I needed to give up my stupid imaginings and concentrate on bettering myself. That’s what my mother had hoped for when she sent me off with my cardboard suitcase and one change of clothes to ‘learn how to lay a table and talk ladylike’. She thought I might even get to be a housekeeper at a big house if I was lucky and took my chance when it came. Every letter she wrote ended with the hope that I would ‘get on’, and every time I went home for a weekend she’d make sure I hadn’t forgotten. ‘Don’t be like me, Elsie,’ she’d say, rolling out soggy pastry on the kitchen table, all the kids running round, and my sister Peggy trying to keep them in order. ‘Make something of yourself. Don’t let a husband and kids drag you down.’
    By then I was pretty good at silver service, and I started to learn all the French words on the menu and say them in the proper way. As well as that, I used to hang around in the kitchen in the mornings while Mr Mullan prepared the food. Then, when the customers asked about Hollandaise sauce or Cutlets Reform, I was able to explain what they were straight away. Mr Reeves the manager said I was the best trainee he had come across, and after Mrs Walsh left to look after her sick auntie in Teignmouth, he made me head waitress, even though I was two years younger than Mavis. ‘It’s not years that count,’ he said. ‘It’s what you’ve got up here.’ And he put his finger to his forehead and tapped it knowingly.
    Then, six months later, when Winnie left to marry the encyclopedia salesman who’d always come in for a grilled plaice on Fridays, I was put in charge of the cash desk – ‘A position of great trust’, said Mr Reeves as he counted out the float in front of me that first day.
    Lots of things started to change, then. Of course I’d seen the newsreels with Hitler spouting off in front of all those thousands of Nazis, but I’d always thought he was somebody comical, with his silly moustache and staring eyes. Keith Beddoes used to mimic him in the store-room with a finger under his nose and his arm stuck up in the air as he marched about: Sieg Heil! He made Mavis and me laugh. But now people were talking about things getting serious, and other countries getting invaded. Sometimes we had guests with foreign accents in the hotel. ‘Refugees,’ explained Mr Reynolds. ‘People who can see the writing on the wall.’ And then all of a sudden, with just a week’s notice, Miss Jennings left to join the Wrens with her very best friend Miss Carter. ‘War is on the cards, Elsie,’ she said, as she gave me a big, and rather sticky, kiss of farewell. ‘Look after yourself, my love, and don’t get taken advantage of.’ Six months later, Mr Chamberlain was on the radio telling us the terrible news.
    Well, half the men at the hotel joined up straight away, and we were so short-staffed that Mr